‘Gaming the future’: How front pages covered or skipped the big story on electoral bonds

In perhaps the biggest reveal ahead of the general elections, the Election Commission published the details on the “purchasers” and beneficiaries of electoral bonds on Thursday evening.

It was a two-part detail submitted by the State Bank of India. A 337-page document listed the names of purchasers, and another 426 pages featured the names of political parties that encashed the bonds. 

Preliminary number-crunching revealed the names of the biggest purchasers, including a lottery king, an infrastructure giant, and a mining conglomerate.

How did front pages cover this news?  

First, The Indian Express. A six-column package titled “Who paid the parties” carried six stories on the top donors to electoral bonds and a “telling pattern” in the newspaper’s Delhi edition.

The main report noted that the “first veil of secrecy is lifted; top 20 donors account for just under half of the total Rs 12,156 crore purchased through electoral bonds 2019-2024.”

The second lead in the package noted that three of the top five donors – Future Gaming, Megha Engineering and Vedanta – bought bonds with ED and I-T knocking on their doors. Another report detailed how on facing the “GST heat”, different pharma companies bought bonds on the same day.    

A story detailed that Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress was placed at No. 2 in the beneficiary list, with bonds worth Rs 1,609 crore, whose “redemption surged after the Assembly polls win”. Another report profiled the top bonds purchaser, Santiago Martin, who contributed across parties. 

The newspaper had another full-page coverage on the electoral bonds in its inside pages. 

“EB bumper: ‘Lottery king’ Santiago No. 1 bond buyer,” read the page one lead headline on The Times of India’s Delhi edition. 

The four-column report detailed the top 22 bond buyers who accounted for “half of the “Rs 12,000 crore purchases from April 2019 to January 2024”. It also carried a graphic of the biggest donors in “the Rs 100 crore club”. 

A report on the biggest donor, Future Gaming, said the company has been on the ED and I-T radar for “10+ years”.       

A long story on the paper’s front flap was titled “Gaming the future? Rs 1,394 crore poll bet by great gambler”. The story featured a list of all the companies which contributed between Rs 20 crore to Rs 100 crore. It also included a scan code that would digitally open the “full list”.   

The Chennai edition of The Hindu’s page one banner headline said, “Poll bonds: 22 firms donated over Rs 100 crore”. It noted that the BJP encashed bonds worth over Rs 6,060.5 crore, “highest among all parties”. 

“In fact, the BJP’s share of the total bonds encashed by the parties was over 47.5 percent,” said the report.   

In the Delhi edition of Hindustan Times, the big story did not find a place on the front page, which featured a half-page ad. 

The news was instead carried on the front flap, with the headline “Lottery firm top donor as EC uploads electoral bonds data”. It also carried a graphic detailing the top 10 bonds buyers.       

The electoral bonds story was the second lead on The Telegraph’s Kolkata edition. The two-column story was titled “Lottery firm top electoral bond list”. Meanwhile, the lead story was about chief minister Mamata Banerjee being “pushed” from behind, sustaining head injuries. 

Newslaundry has joined hands with The News Minute, Scroll and independent journalists to explore the data released last night and decode the pattern of political funding through electoral bonds. Read here.